Google's threat to walk out of China because attempts to hack Chinese dissident mail accounts is symptomatic of the growing tensions between Western thinking and the emerging China. China this month has overtaken Germany as the world's biggest exporter of manufacturing goods. In a few years China will become the largest global economy. Peace within China's borders is critical to the Chinese to achieve its vision of global greatness. Its multiple ethnicities and huge land mass make it particularly vulnerable to voices of dissent. These if unattended can lead to chaos in that country.
While I do not personally subscribe to curbs on individual freedom, but that is my view which has been nurtured in the free and democratic system of India. This however does not mean that I should be insensitive to Chinese system of governance. Google is mixing business with politics. This is dangerous for a corporate. It will inevitably lead to its downfall, its no expertise in the area. Competition will overtake it and others that are willing to work within a country's system of governance will emerge. The intolerance of democratic societies to other systems is as undemocratic as the systems that they oppose.
Very true.......Politics and Business when mixed together, are always dangerous to the corporates. Its a friendship of opportunists and in the changing political scenerioes corporate is ought to fall. It becomes very hard to recover from a downfall in the present age of highly competitive markets and very rightly said many others are surely there to grab this opportunity.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to watch what google and chinese have in store for the days to come..... An article in AlJazeera.net says that google trails homegrown Chinese rival Baidu.com, which handles more than 60 per cent of online searches.
So as you rightly said, google's withdrawl from china may launch other competitors to overtake google in the time to come.